Earlier this year, Polar Rose got some headlines when it applied its nifty photo tagging technology to Flickr, one of the most popular image sharing services on the Web. Cleverly, it used Facebook Connect as a way to identify people that were named and tagged on images hosted on Flickr.
Now the Swedish company is taking it up a notch with the release of a Facebook application that should make it easier for people to discover in which other photos on Facebook, Flickr or 23hq.com they (or any of their friends) appear, whether they’re properly tagged or not.
I installed the application, and after importing all the photos from my account – which took quite a while – Polar Rose let me tag persons in photos that hadn’t been labeled yet. It let me view and edit tags for photos from people I’ve added to my account, as well as those uploaded by persons I’m connected to and are also on Polar Rose (e.g. Mike Butcher, see screenshot below).
When you tag people, Facebook automatically posts about this to the named person’s wall (something that can’t be controlled from the outside), so take that into account before you start mass-tagging. And in case you’re wondering, the application only fetches photos with privacy set as “friends only”, “friends of friends” and “everyone”.
In the future, Polar Rose aims to support more social graphs, like the ones from your Twitter account and Google Contacts.
Face.com is another facial recognition startup, although they’re currently limited to Facebook only, while Polar Rose works across Facebook, Flickr and 23hq. Polar Rose also says it differentiates from Face.com because it isn’t exclusively focused on the tagging part but also about the ‘viewing and sharing experience’.
In case you haven’t heard, Facebook is huge in photo sharing. According to its latest statistics, it hosts about 20 billion photos, of which 5 billion were added in the last 6 months alone. The social network’s public stats claim 2 billion photos are uploaded to the site each month at present time.
Polar rose i never tried that but i will
so.. these guys are responsible for the infamous : http://uploadro...gging-sucks.jpg
not that I don’t like 99 notifications when I login as much as the next guy
?!?
Oh god. Am I going to end up all over the internet now? I get enough creeps as it is with out my face being plastered at each end of the internetal-galaxy
Becky, not at all. We maintain all privacy. Your photos can (still) only be viewed by your friends.
/n
Hmm, looks like it’s worth checking.. Here comes my photo Polar.
Font names por favor…
Tanner, we use the Sign Painter font collection (http://www.hous...npainterfontkit) across the site for page titles, headings and animations.
/n
Beware this program. I used it to add tags to lots of pictures and of lots of people.
Turned out most of those people had wanted to be untagged. And my girlfriend exploded when I tagged a bunch of pictures of me with an ex-girlfriend.
Nothing wrong with the program, but be careful how you use it!!
Antony,
You’re probably referring to the earlier version of Polar Rose which supported tagging public photos. For reasons like the one you mention we have stopped this product and are now letting the photographer maintain photo privacy and the person named control whether their name should appear or not.
/n
The photos still need to be hosted on Facebook, I will jump on one leg when I can facebook-tag photos on my website.
Thanks for this info….I had never heard of Polar Rose. Tagging photo;s on facebook is great and can really help spread the message, especially for Marketers.
But as Anthony pointed out exercise caution because not all folks want to be tagged…and if done too much could lead to your account begin suspended.
Another great tool I thought I would throw out here is the new Facebook Search that Twuugle recently released (a search engine that is tailored to social media sites). This is a really cool search engine that is free and Powered by Google.
I can’t praise it enough as a marketer. The amount of research I have been able to collect is awesome. Hope this serves as another great tool for all of you Social Butterflies out there.
Highest Regards,
Sean
Congratulations to team Polar Rose! I’ve been biting my tongue waiting for this to be released for the general public. Well done guys
-Brian
Careful, I used them and they essentially spammed my FB friends every time I tagged them in a photo. I wasn’t told this would happen and I couldn’t turn off the “feature.” I’ve since canceled my account.
Vaughn,
Polar Rose have reduced and refined how we communicate on Facebook. It is still essential though that users can share their photos and tell their friends when they were named in a photo, just like Facebook does when you tag someone in your Facebook albums. Sharing is an essential element of Polar Rose. We want people to see the photos of themselves that they haven’t seen before.